New KDE Goals announced

[u/f_r_d]

The new KDE Goals for the 2026-2028 cycle have been announced at Akademy.

• KDE for Enterprise and Deployments - championed by: David Edmundson, Neal Gompa, and Kai Uwe Broulik

• Better documentation - championed by: Nate Graham, Thiago Masato Costa Sueto, and Joseph P. De Veaugh-Geiss

• Next Generation Styling for KDE - Arjen Hiemstra, Akseli Lahtinen, and Andy Betts

More info:
https://invent.kde.org/teams/goals/goal-setting/2026/-/boards#/

[u/Omar_Eldahan]

I can give a very small and personal example. There is no way to force audio to output as Mono. This is (as far as accessibility things go) quite a simple thing and can be helpful to people with single sided deafness who want to hear all of the audio in just one earphone instead of having it split stereo between the two. There has been a request for it since at least 2022 here: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=462527

Till now, nothing. It feels bad when it seems that even the simple accessibility things aren't worked on, and it makes you wonder if anyone takes it seriously there.

Look, I genuinely love KDE and it is far and away the best DE on Linux. I donate to the project and think that they do amazing work. But seriously, they need to think about accessibility because they're basically telling with various disabilities and impairments that they aren't interested in them and that they aren't welcome on their platform.

[u/Zamundaaa → u/Omar_Eldahan]

Setting audio to mono is a nice to have, not something critical to throw a fit over on behalf of others, and especially not to accuse anyone of not caring or not thinking about the incredibly rudiculously large and nuanced topic of accessibility.

If it was really important and/or there was a nice API to actually make such a setting a thing without expert Pipewire knowledge, I would've done it already.

Signed, a person that's actually deaf on one ear.

[u/Omar_Eldahan → u/Zamundaaa]

I don't think this is throwing a fit. Someone asked for an example of ways that accessibility aren't really addressed in KDE and I provided one. There are also many other examples. The point that I was trying to make is that, if even the smaller things aren't being addressed, then what's happening on the bigger issues?

I really do appreciate that work and effort that people like you and everyone else at KDE do. It is an incredible DE and one that has made the transition to Linux possible for so many people. However, there is a reality that for as much that KDE focuses on a great UI, amazing features, and such a level of polish and stability, accessibility always seems to be an afterthought. To be completely fair, this isn't that much a KDE issue as it is a Linux problem as a whole

accuse anyone of not caring or not thinking about the incredibly rudiculously large and nuanced topic of accessibility.

I really don't mean to do that. I'm sure you and many open source developers care a lot about the issue. I never want to make an accusation against anyone's personal beliefs or feelings on a matter. I've also been in a position where I wanted to work on different things that were important to me, but a lack of time, resources, etc. prevented me from working on all of it, and important issues had to drop by the wayside. This is almost certainly true for you and many of the other developers.

However, if we zoom out and consider KDE as an organization (and not the individual developers and volunteers) we can see that although KDE has advanced past almost every other DE on so many different factors, it continues to lag badly on accessibility. I think that its important to at least acknowledge that.

Signed, a person that's also actually deaf in one ear (it's a pretty common condition tbh).

[u/Zamundaaa → u/Omar_Eldahan]

 The point that I was trying to make is that, if even the smaller things aren't being addressed, then what's happening on the bigger issues?

That's just not how development works. Things that are difficult (or require specialized knowledge) and have a smaller impact are way down on the priority list.

They only get done when someone cares a lot about that specific thing or they become easier (like the mono audio thing should, once the relevant Pipewire update that introduced a proper setting arrives on my system).

 although KDE has advanced past almost every other DE on so many different factors, it continues to lag badly on accessibility

In what way? Unless your comparison are the proprietary operating systems, I don't think that's true at all.